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WHAT THERAPISTS TREATING IMMIGRANTS HEAR

Some mental-health-care providers are trying new approaches to treat patients whose worst fears have come true.

rica Lubliner is a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who directs a clinic that offers mental-health services to Latinos. She provides care to a wide range of patients: first- to fourth-generation immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, and undergraduate and graduate students at U.C.L.A., many of whom are the first in their families to go to college. She usually meets patients in her bright office on campus in Westwood, where paintings by Mexican artists hang on the walls and children’s books are within easy reach. But, after the ICE raids began around the city last month, she moved her appointments online. Lubliner’s patients are safe in her clinic, she told me, “but even getting here can be scary.”

She had heard that ICE agents had started parking outside some local hospitals. Many of her patients take the bus or walk to their appointments, and they worry that they might get apprehended on the way. “It’s not wise for them to leave their homes, because ICE agents have been circling and patrolling neighborhoods,” she said. Many of her patients have increased their doses of anti-anxiety medication, or have started taking it for the first time. Some young patients experience intense separation anxiety when they go to school, afraid that they’ll return home and their parents will be gone. Many adults ask friends and family to buy groceries for them, or to walk their kids to school.

After ICE arrested people at their places of work, Lubliner sensed her patients’ anguish. “ICE is going after the gardener with his truck, the workers at the car wash. The idea that they are somehow dangerous cuts at their identity in a deep way,” she told me. “They feel unwanted. They feel targeted.” Some of her less vulnerable patients participated in protests against the raids, but others struggled with whether to take the risk...

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Published July 1, 2025

- newyorker com news -